


Would Feed on Ashes

by the_rck



Series: Not Ready to Swallow Oblivion [2]
Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Captivity, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Minor Character Death, Negotiations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unreliable Narrator, Villain Warren Peace, surrender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 11:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14933261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Hiding what Layla could do only required two killings, and Warren managed both of them before his prisoners regained consciousness. His people had kept them unconscious long enough for Warren to wake and be able to think. Keeping Ethan under had been hard, apparently, but no one bothered telling Warren that until he asked two weeks later.One of the necessary murders was a woman named Jennifer Anglin who had been the one to strip Layla and Magenta while they were unconscious. She’d found seeds stuck to Layla’s skin without any perceptible adhesive. If she’d put the pieces together and told one or the other of Warren’s parents before telling Warren, she’d have survived.As it was, Warren simply had a tantrum. Later, when talking to his father, he put it down to after effects from having been poisoned and said that he’d lost control.His father told him that, in the future, he should try to direct such things at less valuable people.





	1. Warren: Masquerading as Salvation

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "A Drama of Exile."
> 
> Discussion of off screen torture.  
> On screen murder of OCs.  
> Referenced past telepathic child abuse.
> 
> An annotated index for the entire series can be found here: https://somethingdarker.dreamwidth.org/65198.html
> 
> This is not as well polished as I'd hoped to get it. Thanks to Elizabeth_Culmer and Karios for beta reading.

**3 December 2005**

Warren had never hurt this much before, not physically, not that he remembered. It wasn’t a thing his mother would have let him keep. He could feel his power trying to burn the poison out of his body even as his stomach turned itself inside out, trying to force out what he hadn’t already absorbed. He didn’t remember throwing up like that before, either.

Part of his mind was trying to work out how his prisoners could have managed poison. He’d seen it and tasted it, and it wasn’t something they’d liberated from a supply cupboard. He’d been pretty careful about the flowers he gave them. None of those should do this.

But he could blame the flowers if he had to explain where the poison came from. His mother didn’t expect him to think of things like that, and his father-- Warren wasn’t sure his father knew him well enough to have any idea what Warren would or wouldn’t think of.

That Layla had been able to touch his forehead and _alter_ the effects of the poison told Warren that whatever it was had to be something she controlled rather than just something she’d made. Which meant-- 

His mind ran in circles trying to deny it, but there was no way Layla could be a sidekick. He thought of the flowers after Homecoming. He thought of the damaged foundations. He thought of a month locked in a concrete hole and of the self-control involved in not using the plants during their first-- and every subsequent-- walk across the school grounds.

Maybe she could only make things grow when she was upset? That seemed wrong. Plants wanted to grow, so that should be easiest. That should be hard _not_ to do. Warren was pretty sure plants didn’t want to be chemically rejiggered so that they could be useful for something that would never benefit them.

Thinking about all of that was easier than watching what was going on around him. He really didn’t like any of the options. He could die. He could be kidnapped. He could be saved but have his not-quite friends die or have to punish them personally. He could have to explain the whole mess to his mother in person.

He’d take getting kidnapped over that last. He wouldn’t choose dying over explaining to his mother. He’d do a lot not to die, but being kidnapped might be something not so terrible.

As long as things stopped hurting soon. As long as Layla made things stop hurting soon. Warren was pretty sure she could have already if she’d wanted to; she just needed everyone to see that he was sick.

He thought his knees were getting weaker. No. That was Magenta collapsing. That was bad. Whatever had happened was affecting Ethan, too; he was wobbling a bit under Warren’s other arm. Warren closed his eyes to stop the floor from moving under him. He felt Ethan straighten and start trying to drag them both back into Warren’s room.

“Keep back!” Ethan said in a voice that sounded like he was having trouble breathing. “I’ll kill him if you hurt any of them!”

Warren thought, vaguely, that Ethan wouldn’t. Warren alive might still save whoever wasn’t hurt. Warren dead was just a corpse. If Magenta was down-- Was she? --then the kidnapping and escape were falling apart.

If his people-- his parents’ people-- stopped this kidnapping, Warren was going to have to make sure no one realized what Layla could do. He could use her for-- something. As long as she stayed secret, he could.

Warren let himself sleep.

****

**4-5 December 2018**

Warren had been rescued from the sidekicks by a combination of powers and technology. There was one man, Edward Tang, who worked for Warren’s father who could see the likelihood that a person would die soon. He was useful for observing interrogations and punishments that weren’t meant to be lethal, but he wasn’t very popular in social settings. His eyes tended to sharpen in a certain way when someone took a first bite of a bacon double cheeseburger or when someone had one drink too many. 

Tang had looked at Warren and seen almost no chance that he would die that night; he’d interpreted that as Warren not actually having been poisoned. He’d also looked around and seen a very high probability that all the rest of them were going to die before morning. Tang couldn’t evaluate his own chances, but obviously, his odds weren’t likely to be better than anyone else’s, so he’d told people what he saw.

At that point, Warren’s father’s other people had decided that they could risk gassing the hallway and rooms where Warren and the escapees were. If Warren died, some of them might still survive if they found a deep enough hole to hide in. 

The babies had all ended up pretty sick as a result of the gas. A dose potent enough for a teenager was near lethal for someone that small, but none of them had died, and probably none of them had been permanently damaged. Warren had burned a few people for that, just not in ways that would kill, maim, or leave scars. They’d rescued him, after all.

He just wanted to be sure they remembered that he valued the babies. He had to be sure that risking the babies was something they considered and avoided if the matter came up again. 

Those screams didn’t bother Warren in the least. They made him feel powerful, like a proper supervillain, like his father’s son.

Hiding what Layla could do only required two killings, and Warren managed both of them before his prisoners regained consciousness. His people had kept them unconscious long enough for Warren to wake and be able to think. Keeping Ethan under had been hard, apparently, but no one bothered telling Warren that until he asked two weeks later.

One of the necessary murders was a woman named Jennifer Anglin who had been the one to strip Layla and Magenta while they were unconscious. She’d found seeds stuck to Layla’s skin without any perceptible adhesive. If she’d put the pieces together and told one or the other of Warren’s parents before telling Warren, she’d have survived. 

As it was, Warren simply had a tantrum. Later, when talking to his father, he put it down to after effects from having been poisoned and said that he’d lost control.

His father told him that, in the future, he should try to direct such things at less valuable people.

It scared his minions shitless because most of them had forgotten that he might be dangerous. Warren supposed that the timing was right to remind them of it. Killing someone made the point that he both could and would. Warren Peace was son to both Barron Battle and Sylvia Peace. Neither of them hesitated to kill. No one should think he wouldn’t kill.

And the woman in question hadn’t been real at all.

The other death wasn’t as showy. The poor bastard had decided to analyze the contents of all of the water bottles and to take samples of several parts of the shower walls. Warren found out while the guy was writing a very detailed report for Warren’s father. 

Warren hadn’t thought that another tantrum would cover it. Also, open flame that strong in a lab seemed like a terrible idea. He’d considered Layla and her levels of control. He’d considered the likelihood that he would need to dispose of people who knew inconvenient things again, the likelihood that he’d want those deaths to look like something other than a use of his powers.

Setting things on fire wasn’t subtle. Killing people that way tended to be noisy and smelly and to leave scorch marks on the walls and floor. It also took too damned long.

So Warren had asked for a chance to read the report. He’d touched the man’s hand and tried to send a potential for heat from that skin contact, deep into the man’s body. It hadn’t worked anything like right, but the visible burn was small enough that it could have been due to carelessness in the lab, and Warren had declared an autopsy to be a waste of resources when they had so many sick infants. Isidore Charania’s body had been recycled by Sky High’s waste reclamation system hours before Warren notified anyone groundside.

It hadn’t been noisy. It hadn’t been smelly in the same way, certainly no stench of burned anything. The man had had too much time though, almost a minute from touch to death. He’d realized what Warren was doing. It was too late by then, but he’d clutched at his desk for support, met Warren’s eyes, and asked, “Why?” He could have screamed. He could have done several other things that would have been very inconvenient.

“Because I need my parents not to see that.” Warren had thought he could give the man that much. “Because it’s going to be my secret. Because none of you work for me.” He’d hesitated for a fraction of a second, trying to recall the man’s personnel file. “Your kids will get a pension.”

His mother didn’t pay pensions. His father only did sometimes, more often than not but still not always.

Charania had closed his eyes at Warren’s words. A few seconds later, he had collapsed. His death felt weirdly more real than any other Warren had witnessed. Warren would have to practice-- probably with animals-- until he could do this faster and cleaner. That would mean trips to the surface. He wasn’t ready to bring animals to Sky High because that would mean answering questions about why.

He never intended to tell Layla-- or the others-- about those deaths. If they didn’t guess, it would be because they were still that innocent. If they did-- He was almost certain they wouldn’t. Someone might tell them about the woman, but no one who wasn’t Warren could tell them why.

He told his mother a very carefully structured set of truths that came together to support his unspoken lie. 

Layla was obsessed with botany (she was). 

She’d recognized some things growing in the shower and combined them with things she got from parts of the flowers he’d given them (he left out the part about having made things grow in the shower). 

Most of the water bottles contained tap water (all of them did, just none of them had only that). 

Some had tap water contaminated with things from the flowers or from their meals (‘all’ very definitely included ‘some’). 

That was all. No mention of complicated substances that couldn’t be explained by botany and by Warren screwing up. Layla had simply, Warren implied, lied about what was in most of them.

It was a really stupid cover explanation that no one at all should have believed, but the alternative was that Sky High had assigned someone with Layla’s level of power to Hero Support and that she hadn’t objected and that her parents hadn’t objected. Sky High fucking up was almost believable. The part about Layla and her parents? Really not so much.

Certainly, Warren’s mother had no inkling.

Her offer to visit and make his prisoners more cooperative wasn’t much more than half-hearted, and Warren was beyond relieved by that. If she’d insisted, he couldn’t have said no, and all four of them had just become more interesting. He hadn’t thought they could, but they had. Having his mother take them now would hurt.

Having his mother take them now would mean Warren couldn’t use them for-- He’d figure out what he could use them for later. It wouldn’t be anything his mother would disapprove of. He wouldn’t do that.

He had thought that punishing his prisoners would be easy, and when it came time, he didn’t hesitate, but he couldn’t distance himself from it quite as much as he had expected to be able to. He disliked their screams and struggles. 

His mother hadn’t told him to do it. His father hadn’t told him to do it. Warren simply knew that he’d never get respect from anyone working for him if he didn't punish the quartet of sidekicks in a way that involved agony and some sort of permanent mark. 

If they’d been loyal minions who’d made mistakes, he could be generous and forgiving without looking weak, but they were enemies. They had chosen that.

They’d tried very hard to harm him for their own ends, and Magenta had had a trigger device that probably linked to some sort of bomb. Warren’s people couldn’t find it, might never find it. If Magenta hadn’t gone under fast enough not to realize what was happening, they’d all be dead. 

It was rebellion. It was treachery. It couldn’t be dismissed as amusing.

He also half expected Layla to pull the building down around them. She had to be as motivated for that as she had been at Homecoming, so he wondered for weeks after whether she hadn’t because she couldn’t or hadn’t because she had that much self-control.

But asking would be admitting that he knew. If he didn’t say it, his mother would have a harder time digging it out of him, and nobody could overhear his thoughts. Especially not the ones he wasn’t actually thinking.


	2. Magenta: The Plaited Thorns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from W.B. Yeats' “The Travail of Passion.”
> 
> Magenta's briefly suicidal here and very definitely homicidal.

**Sunday 11 December 2005**

Their escape attempt and Warren’s retaliation changed surprisingly little about how Warren and Magenta interacted. She’d thought it would. Then, after the first time Warren took her out for a walk, she realized that she shouldn’t have. From Warren’s point of view, nothing had altered. He’d known they’d try and that an attempt to hurt him might be part of it.

He wasn’t even angry.

Most of the burns Warren gave them as punishment hurt like hell but would heal without scarring. Magenta, Layla, and Zach, however, all ended up with heavy bandages around their wrists to cover burns that Warren had very deliberately made much worse. They would have visible scars, rings an inch or two up from their wrists, when they healed.

Ethan spent a lot of time screaming because Warren hadn’t accepted yet that Ethan’s body wouldn’t scar. If Ethan could shift, just about any injury would be healed when he came back to human form. If he couldn’t or didn’t, he still healed faster and more completely than a normal human would. 

After the second time, Ethan tried not to heal. His body did it anyway, faster each time.

Magenta still hurt like hell from the burns Warren had given her, and she really, really wanted to gut him. If she’d still had the trigger, she’d have exploded Gwen’s bomb-- partly out of anger and partly because she didn’t think she could face hearing Ethan scream again. 

Given the right materials, she could make a device that would do the job, but Warren wasn’t going to give her that, and there wasn’t any chance that she’d have been able to sync it with the bomb, anyway.

Even if Ethan could get into the ducts with the trigger, he would refuse to sync it because he’d be certain that Magenta would use it as soon as he gave it back to her. 

He’d be entirely right.

Warren walked slowly this time and didn’t say much until they were outside the school. “Painkillers,” he said then. “I think that’s a fair trade for what we had before.”

Whatever she’d expected Warren to say, it hadn’t been that. They all needed painkillers, so Magenta nodded. She eyed him warily. “And next time?”

“That would be really stupid.” He wasn’t talking about the painkillers.

Magenta looked away. She knew that, if Warren pushed right then, she’d collapse like a wall after the mortar rotted. She’d known before that he _could_ hurt her. She just hadn’t realized, not on a visceral level, how frightening it would be and how long the pain would continue. She looked at the sky then at the grass. “Let me jump,” she said.

She hadn’t known she was going to say that. She’d thought she could keep bending because she’d always had to.

“No,” Warren said.

She set her shoulders and didn’t look at him. She hadn’t heard any give in his voice. “I don’t understand.” She didn’t.

“I… can’t explain.” The words were completely flat except for an almost imperceptible emphasis on ‘can’t.’ He touched her shoulder with his fingertips, just the lightest possible pressure.

Magenta shuddered. “Could we go in? Either to your room or back to the cell? I… can’t. Not right now.”

Warren sighed. “They’re going to knock every five minutes to make sure I’m not dead.”

Which wasn’t no.

Magenta made a contemptuous sound. “If you’re dead, all four of us had better be, too.” Or gone. Being gone would have been wonderful. She wanted to cry, but she really didn’t want the snipers to see that, didn’t want them to see her accept the comfort that she knew Warren would offer.

Maybe she was going to collapse without Warren even having to push.

She turned to face him. “I’d try to kill you, anyway, right now,” she said softly, “but I’m pretty sure your guards _wouldn’t_ kill me. It would just be more pain.”

“Consequences.” His eyes met hers. “When you accept a choice, you accept the consequences.” He offered her his arm.

She took it.

“I accepted all of this,” he told her as they started walking, “the moment I decided to keep the four of you.”

“That’s worse.”

He shrugged.

Magenta wondered if there was a diagnosis, somewhere in that big, blue book that shrinks used, for what Warren was. Probably, and that probably wouldn’t help her at all in figuring out how to deal with him.

She managed not to cry until they got to his room. At that point, she went into his bathroom and let the sobs take her. If someone did check in on Warren, Magenta didn’t hear them. When she was out of tears, she washed her face.

Then she stole one of Warren’s spare razorblades. He might notice or might not. Having it made her feel better, and she suspected he’d realize that there wasn’t a hell of a lot she could actually do with it.

Opening the door to go back out and face Warren was still one of the hardest things she’d ever done. She managed to keep her voice mostly steady as she said, “You have to tell us what you want.”

Warren looked at her for a moment then said very carefully, “I. Can’t.”

Oh. Not won’t. Not don’t know. Can’t.

If Warren’s mother could do half of the things that gossip claimed, that can’t might actually be literal.

He was sitting at his desk, so she sat on his bed. “You’d better find a way around that, then,” she told him, “because none of us can read minds.”

He flinched then shook his head.

Magenta kept her eyes on him and waited.

After several minutes, he said, “I have to think about that.”

Magenta sighed and closed her eyes. “Do you have something here I can take for the burns?”

Warren waved toward the bathroom. “You already know.”

She’d been kind of hoping he had something stronger than Tylenol stashed in one of the drawers she hadn’t yet gotten around to searching. She hesitated then nodded, went back to the bathroom, and took two tablets.

“I can give Ethan morphine if he’ll let himself scar.” Warren’s offer was so quiet that Magenta almost couldn’t hear it.

Magenta swallowed hard. She stood by Warren’s sink and didn’t look at Warren. “He can’t. We all understood the point of these.” She raised one of her hands to make Warren look at her bandaged wrist. “He _can’t_. You think he didn’t try?”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Warren said, “Yes. I thought that.”

Magenta turned and glared at him. “You really do think we’re fucking stupid, don’t you?”

Warren smiled at her. “I should have remembered.”

“Don’t.” She had no illusions that the smile was real or meant anything, and she wanted to rip the expression off of his face. If she changed shape, she might actually be able to. Her guinea pig form really wasn’t that any more. She had claws now that might be sharp enough to tear out his throat. If she surprised him and killed him, she could get into the vents from here, could arm herself and take down the guards.

But her friends knew about the babies now. They wouldn’t leave without them.

She couldn’t take Warren hostage with what she had, and he probably wasn’t going to give her access to anything that might help.

Warren must have seen some of that in her face because the smile vanished. He shook his head. “Yeah, I wouldn’t because I will maim you if I have to.”

He’d do that, but he wouldn’t kiss her. 

“Your ethical lines are in some fucking weird places.” Which made her wonder if that particular line was actually his. But, if it wasn’t, why pretend in the first place? She’d considered that he might be gay and hiding it from his parents, but she was sure that he found her attractive. She sat on the bed again. “Some time when I don’t hurt, some time… later on-- I wouldn’t-- If we did kiss or make out or fuck, I wouldn’t assume it meant anything.”

For a fraction of a second, Warren looked like she’d stabbed him. Then he looked at the ugly painting behind her on the wall. “I would.”

And, if he could get her to the point where she only wanted what he wanted, that assumption would be safe. Otherwise, she’d eventually find a way to use it against him.

“I sometimes forget that you’re smart, too,” she told him. “Probably because half of what you do is--” She cut herself off and shook her head.

“I don’t have to punish you for words in private,” he said. He looked thoughtful. “Not most words in public, either, not as long as we’re in a situation where I could be amused. Just…” He hesitated. “If you-- any of you-- meet my parents, keep your mouths shut and your eyes down. I won’t try to protect you if you fuck up.”

Magenta believed him. “Are we likely to?”

“Eventually. Assuming no one dies.” Warren looked at his hands. “My father still thinks you’re a harmless indulgence.” He shook his head. “Even after-- After. He thinks I’ll either get you all trained or get tired of you and--” He made a tossing away gesture.

Given where they were, getting ‘tossed away’ was too likely to end with an abrupt and lethal impact. Even though she’d asked for exactly that a short time before, Magenta shivered.

“That would be an asshole move,” Warren said.

She stared at him. “And the rest of this isn’t?”

“I do like having all of you around.” Which wasn’t any sort of denial. “If nothing else, you’re all under thirty. Without you, there wouldn’t be anyone within a decade of my age.”

“That’s a piss poor reason for it all.” Magenta couldn’t find enough energy to make the remark cutting. She wanted it to be, but she didn’t have that. She wondered if Warren’s parents would have even realized that Warren being so alone mattered.

“It was a whim.”

“Bullshit.” Magenta didn’t bother hiding her disbelief, but she didn’t have the energy for more. She thought the Tylenol was maybe starting to help. More than anything, she wanted to curl up on the bed and pretend that it was hers, that she could get up and walk out if she wanted to.

“I should have given you something for the pain a lot sooner. Have any of you managed to sleep?” Warren sounded as if he already knew the answer.

Magenta was pretty sure that, even if they’d been able to sleep through the pain, the knowledge of what was waiting for Ethan the next time Warren noticed that he’d healed would have kept them all awake anyway. “I don’t think I’ve got anything else to give you, Warren.” And she didn’t think he’d listen if she begged.

He nodded, obviously following her thoughts. “Next time,” he said. “After next time, he stays where people can see that it’s not something he’s doing deliberately.”

She wanted something better than that, so she had to swallow bitterness before she nodded. “I hate you,” she said softly.

“I know.”


	3. Layla: Lilies of Death-Pale Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from W.B. Yeat's “The Travail of Passion.”

All of them, including Warren, realized that Ethan’s healing had gotten steadily faster each time.

Layla was surprised that Warren didn’t push that further. Even with Magenta saying Warren had promised only once more, Layla was surprised. Ethan healing faster would be an advantage for Warren, after all, and it wasn’t invulnerability. No matter how fast Ethan healed, it was always going to hurt when he was injured.

Coach Boomer would have said that Ethan needed to toughen up to endure that in the field. Coach Boomer had been an asshole.

Still, Layla’d seen the moment when Warren really decided not to. He hadn’t stopped the torture immediately, but he hadn’t kept going as long as he normally would.

Layla hated that there was a ‘normally would’ for the duration of torture. She also waited a long time before she let herself believe that it had really been the last time.

Magenta was usually right about Warren and things like that, but Layla knew that it would be worse if she believed and Magenta turned out to be wrong.

They were still locked in the girls’ locker room, but there was now a grate over each of the air duct openings and a motion sensor activated camera just inside that would alert Warren if they tried to remove the grates.

Ethan could get through the grates without setting off the motion detectors. Trying that had been a gamble, one that Ethan had chosen to make, one that none of the rest of them would have asked of him.

But the idea of him being able to escape was hope for the rest of them. None of the others were going to surrender to Warren until Ethan had a chance to try or decided not to. None of them were going to take that possibility from the rest of them. 

Ethan wouldn’t be able to get the rest of them out, though, and all three of them had asked him not to try. Even if he managed to get a weapon for taking out the guards, Layla wouldn’t leave the babies, and Magenta wouldn’t leave Layla.

Layla wasn’t sure what Zach wouldn’t leave because he didn’t say. He just shook his head and told Ethan no.

Ethan’s best hope of escape was getting to a bus without anyone even realizing he was out.

Warren still took Ethan, Magenta, and Zach out for walks, but he’d looked at Layla flatly when she asked why she wasn’t getting a turn. Warren had held her eyes and said, “We both know I’m not that stupid.”

Layla took that to mean that he didn’t understand her reach. He thought that twice daily inspections and a lot of bleach would keep her from growing anything. He didn’t realize that she could reach everything on Sky High’s island now. She could have reached farther if she weren’t aiming for precision. She could tell that because there were a lot of spores in the air beyond. 

Warren’s cleaning crew never noticed that she had mold and mildew on the ceiling. Even if they had, mold and mildew weren’t plants.

And Warren’s cleaning crew seemed to think that the things Layla had used had just happened to grow. Which meant that Warren hadn’t told them.

Mainly, the inspections meant having to be very careful about what Ethan did and when.

 

**Monday 1 January 2006**

Three weeks after the last time Warren tortured Ethan, a few days after they confirmed that Ethan could now move fast enough once past the grate and motion sensors to be able to be able reach the exit nearest the buses in under twenty minutes, Warren came to take Magenta out, and Layla said, “I would like to see the babies.” She looked at him and then lowered her eyes and let her shoulders slump. “I’d make promises for that.”

“I’ll think about it.” Warren sounded mostly as if he didn’t care what she might do.

All four of them knew him well enough by now to know that he was pleased. He didn’t trust any of them, but he really did want them to give in. He thought Layla was their sticking point, and none of them were going to tell him differently.

Layla needed to bow to Warren before Ethan tried to escape. If it weren’t for the babies, she’d simply start destroying Sky High once she was sure Ethan had had time to get near the buses. If she started from the other side of the island, the distraction would keep anyone from noticing him in the vulnerable moments before he managed to take off.

Ethan didn’t know that was a thing she could do. At least, she hoped he didn’t. She’d decided he didn’t need to know because she wasn’t going to do it. Even if she had intended to do it, she wouldn’t have told him. If he knew, he wouldn’t leave.

Ethan knew that, if she started that sort of destruction, she would finish it. Her anger would devour everything because anger felt much, much better than despair.

And, if she did manage to stop, Warren would know what she could do. There was no pleasant result from that. Layla’d rather fall to her death than have Warren torture her again. He’d probably do it anyway, after Ethan stole a bus. None of them talked about that part, but they all knew. They all also knew that, even if Ethan managed to persuade someone to try to rescue the rest of them, it was going to be too late for Layla and for Zach.

At any rate, Warren still thought Layla’d worked from his cut flowers, her seeds, and the algae. He didn’t know about the mold and mildew or the fungus. She’d gotten rid of the visible manifestations of all three before Magenta and Ethan set out to poison Warren.

And, really, the flowers had been crucial.

Knowing that Warren wasn’t particularly into torturing any of them didn’t help at all because he was still going to do it. Deliberately. Precisely. Without hesitation or remorse.

 

**Thursday 4 January 2006**

A few days later, Warren took Layla to visit the babies. He told her that there were always six caregivers in the rooms set aside for the infants. They worked a complicated set of overlapping shifts so that the staff wasn’t all changing over at one time and so that each person got breaks. The rooms had been redecorated with bright colors and sharp contrasts. Music played in the background.

“This is the room for the ones who’re currently awake,” Warren said. “We’re going to need more people soon because their sleep schedules are changing. We’re also working on a barrier for the perimeter of the island. Once the kids get mobile…” He shrugged. “At least we’ve got lots of room.”

He leaned against the wall near the doorway while Layla played with one of the babies. She tickled and talked nonsense and felt something inside her start to relax. Part of her had been afraid that Warren was hurting the babies. She’d known, on a very coldly intellectual level, that he probably wasn’t, but she knew he could. If it might get him something, he probably would.

He might still do it later on, but he gained nothing at all right now by harming the babies or by allowing anyone else to do so.

She thought-- she hoped-- that he understood people well enough to realize that he’d get better results if the supers he produced were sane.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Warren smiling while she gave a little girl a bottle. For a moment, she could almost think he was the boy she’d wanted him to be. The boy she still desperately wanted him to be. She blinked several times in an effort to keep back the tears.

She knew when Warren moved, but she didn’t look at him as he sat down beside her. She kept her eyes on the child in her arms.

“I haven’t told anyone about your seeds,” he said very softly. “Just the flowers and the keen interest in botany. It’s ridiculous but not quite as ridiculous as the truth.” He was silent for several seconds. “And much safer for you.”

She nodded minutely, mostly in acknowledgment that she’d heard.

“I’m not going to forget.”

She hadn’t thought he would, and she very definitely heard the warning in his voice. She nodded again. The baby had fallen asleep, so Layla handed the nearly empty bottle to Warren and moved the child to her shoulder. She let her own head rest so that all she smelled was the baby she held.

“It was a clever plan,” he went on. “At least a chance of success.”

She forced herself to look at him. “A chance, too, that none of us would die in the attempt. All of the other options were likely to end with one of us dead or--” She shook her head.

“I had to.”

“I know. We all knew.” She wished she’d picked a rocking chair instead of the padded bench where she sat. Being able to release some of her tension through movement would have helped a little.

She also wouldn’t have to feel Warren’s body quite so near to hers. She knew he wasn’t going to burn her again, not here, not now, but she also knew in the deepest parts of her psyche that he could. Because he had. Because he would again if he had a reason.

“I haven’t asked you for promises, yet,” he said.

“I noticed.” She couldn’t stop herself from shuddering.

He had to have felt it, but he didn’t acknowledge it. “No poisons,” he said. “I won’t ask you for them, and I want your word you won’t make them on your own or for anyone else.”

Her mouth moved before she even thought. “Exception for protecting children,” she said. She felt his laugh vibrate through her.

“Granted. You may poison or otherwise harm anyone who’s threatening children.” There was an odd weight to the way he said it, almost as if he was giving her something real.

She supposed he was, really; ‘threatening’ was… extremely open to interpretation. She’d be breaking the spirit if she tried to kill Warren again for, say, buying Nestle products.

But she wouldn’t be breaking the letter, and Warren had to know that much.

She glanced at him and saw that he was looking at the baby.

“My mother was afraid of Jetstream,” he said, his voice soft enough that Layla almost couldn’t hear him. Certainly no one else could. “Homecoming and Gwen were all about that. Mom waited ten years for someone to… deal with Jetstream for her. I expect, without Gwen, I’d have had to do it eventually.” His voice was utterly flat. “My mother is… physically vulnerable.”

Layla got the impression that he was picking his words carefully. She didn’t let herself think about why. Not yet. Not while he was still talking.

“I can talk about what she can’t do.” Warren’s eyes widened just a little bit as if he’d only just realized that. 

Layla didn’t believe that reaction. Warren had to have at least guessed, or he wouldn’t have started the conversation.

“She can’t _read_ minds.” He frowned, and his mouth worked a little. “She can’t find all the mental evidence or anchor a new memory as firmly as-- as the real thing. She can’t take an old memory as easily--” He choked.

Layla stopped breathing for a second when she realized that he physically couldn’t say what he’d tried to. Then she understood that he’d known it would happen, had intended it to happen. He knew that he couldn’t say ‘she can’ and follow it with any sort of truth. He wanted Layla to know, too.

And she understood that there was a reason that Warren hadn’t been the one to prevent their escape. He was playing a very dangerous game with his sanity as the only stakes that mattered to him.

Layla and her friends were randomization.

“I’d have done things differently,” he said almost a minute later, “if I’d known about your… seeds. You’d still probably lose, but I’d have done things differently.” He touched the baby on Layla’s shoulder with one gentle finger. “Her real name’s Josie.”

The tag on the baby’s ankle clearly read ‘Diana.’

“Gwen didn’t count the babies,” Warren said, “but I wasn’t fast enough to get all the babies on Mom’s list. I wasted time on the four of you when I should have been focused. She’s not happy with me, but she loves me. I get infinite resets.”

That went really horrible places, and Layla admitted to herself that the actual miracle was that Warren could perform sanity and self-control and anything approaching humanity. She met his eyes. “Are any of us real?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded like he didn’t care, either. “If I keep remembering you, I’ll keep thinking you are. I might get to.” He smiled. “I have a diary. You’re all in there with the things I’ve forgotten already, so there’s that. Also, she mentioned grandchildren. I’m _sixteen_ , and what the hell would we do with another baby?”

Layla’s mind stuttered to a stop. She was fluent enough in Warren to make the connections he’d skipped over so lightly. She also knew that she couldn’t say the things she wanted to about Warren’s mother. Not safely.

But Warren’s mother, Sylvia Peace, was clearly a threat.

“If my diary is right--”

Layla was sure she heard the slightest extra emphasis on the word ‘if.’

“--I haven’t seen her since a week before Homecoming. It makes sense. She had a lot to organize on short notice, and now she’s having fun being able to cut loose.” Warren touched the baby again. “She doesn’t find babies very interesting, so I don’t think she’ll visit soon.” He looked around the room. “She likes the long term possibilities, but waiting another couple of decades to take over the world would be…” His voice altered slightly as if he were copying someone else’s mannerisms. “So very, very tedious.”

“Warren--” Layla had no idea what she was going to say, but she had to say something.

Warren stood. “No poison unless children are threatened.” He stood. “Say, under eighteen?” He walked away without giving her time to respond.

Layla was pretty sure that Warren hadn’t missed that he was sixteen and she and her friends were fourteen. Even if Layla hadn’t understood the danger to baby Jetstream, the danger to Warren, to Layla, to Ethan, Zach, and Magenta, was pretty damned obvious. Layla took several steadying breaths then stood. 

The caregiver who’d helped her with the bottle earlier took the baby from her. “I’ll just put her in the nap room,” the man said quietly.

Layla nodded. She closed her eyes for a moment then forced her legs to carry her to a colorful rug that would not have been out of place in a nursery school. She sat on a bright yellow ‘3’ and started talking nonsense to a child that was trying very hard to grab a toy that was just out of reach.

Making poison would be hard with the twice daily inspections, and Warren was fractured enough that very bad things would happen if he caught her with secret brews. She was chillingly certain that he had enough pieces missing that he would kill her without hesitation if it seemed necessary or even mildly more convenient.

Part of him would happily torture Layla and her friends if it would make his mother give him the faintest whiff of approval. Part of him wanted his mother very, very, very dead.

Maybe that second part would give Layla a greenhouse.


	4. Ethan: In the Bitter Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from W.B. Yeats' “The Two Trees.”

Ethan could think and analyze as long as he didn't have to see Warren or interact with him. That made going for walks a particular form of hell. Ethan still managed to walk toward Warren when Warren came for him, but his mouth went dry, and his hands shook. He couldn't talk to Warren at all.

Maybe enough hours with Warren there and no flame would help Ethan get past it. Ethan doubted it, but maybe was all he had, and it wasn’t as if Warren was optional.

Warren didn’t try to get Ethan to talk, and he never went out of his way to remind Ethan of what could happen. 

When Ethan was safely away from Warren, he could recognize that as scary perception about trauma. When they were wandering, he was simply grateful for the mercy.

Which was clearly not mercy. If any of them fell apart completely, Warren would lose the game he had drafted them into. Ethan was pretty sure Warren wasn't actually capable of affection for anyone who wasn't Warren. 

Magenta needed to think Warren could care, and that probably wouldn't hurt her worse, so Ethan didn't try to enlighten her.

Layla did need to know, but she said it didn't matter because Warren needed other people to think he was fond of them. She said performative affection would work well enough.

It wasn't as if they had other options.

Zach just figured they were fucked no matter what. Realistically, Zach was right, but there wasn't a way forward in that direction, so Ethan pretended Zach was wrong.

He could do that as long as Warren wasn't there.

Maybe Warren actually would believe it if the others told him that Ethan had changed form and let himself be swallowed by the shower room drain. They could save that ploy for a point when having someone on the outside for a day or three might help. Ethan wasn't sure he could hide much longer than that even if no one was looking for him. His odds were pretty terrible anyway. He couldn't hide in the sorts of places Magenta had. He tended to flatten and spread, and he didn't blend in with most indoor surfaces. 

When Ethan got caught, Warren would hurt him very, very badly. Ethan was pretty sure that Warren knowing that Ethan could heal meant Warren going a lot farther than he would with the others. When Ethan let himself think about that, he had to shut himself in a toilet stall until he could stop shaking.

He thought the lawn might be easier to hide in because he’d be flowing around near the roots of the blades of grass, but that would make him useless for anything inside the building. Layla insisted on working out a code in case he did hide in the grass. She said it wouldn’t matter that neither of them remembered the entire Morse code alphabet because they were only going to communicate with each other. As long as they both thought that some combination of pulses meant one thing, it would.

“I’ll know where you are,” Layla’d met his eyes. Hers were now a green that sparked with power. “I can tell where people are touching plants all the way to the edge of the island.”

Ethan understood the part that Layla didn’t say. If there was ever a time when enough of Warren’s people were within reach, Layla could-- absolutely would-- kill all of them.

Ethan didn’t like any of the things that Layla told them about what Warren had said to her about his mother. Mostly, he didn’t like what it told them about Warren and the way it confirmed things that he and Magenta had suspected.

The only good thing coming out of it, in Ethan’s opinion, was a goal that they could all focus on that didn’t involve him abandoning them to be punished for his escape. The odds that Ethan could escape entirely weren’t terrible. If he could figure out how to start a bus, he could simply go. If he couldn’t, he’d know which bus was next in the rotation to leave. He could become a stowaway. Needing supplies meant that there were buses coming and going a lot, and Ethan doubted the floors of the buses were any cleaner than they had been when they transported kids.

The idea of them actively working toward his escape when the only thing that was sure to happen was Warren torturing them had made Ethan sick. He’d have gone anyway because all of the alternatives were worse. There was a chance-- a very small chance-- that he could bring help back for the others. 

The chances were that Warren would simply move Sky High again. There was no reason to think he couldn’t. But, if he thought Ethan was dead, if Ethan secretly hitched a ride, Warren might not realize he needed to.

Ethan thought that that was worth the added risk of time for Warren to realize what Ethan might be doing. All of the others wanted him to grab a bus and go.

Not one of them had any illusions about what Warren would do if he caught Ethan trying to escape, but each of the others had taken Ethan aside to tell him that the other two had to have something they could hope for. 

Before Layla came back from visiting the nursery, Ethan hadn’t been able to come up with other options. Having finally figured out that rescue wasn’t coming because no one knew they had survived had been-- 

Well, ‘devastating’ was the wrong word. Completely wrong. It was actually a bit of relief because it meant that no one had deliberately abandoned them. It just also meant that no one was ever going to work their way down a to-do list and finally come to save them. Which… kind of limited their options to Warren and more Warren. It was a question of whether it was Warren using them or Warren torturing them.

Ethan couldn’t work for Warren, but maybe he could work for Layla while she worked for Warren. They wouldn’t be heroes. They’d be on the wrong side of the war, and Ethan working for Layla rather than for Warren would be sophistry and semantics, but… Ethan maybe could do that without losing himself. Layla’s intentions, whatever their exact moral shade, were a better road to Hell than Warren’s because she at least had some.

Warren might go left, might go right, might leap straight up as far as he could. Warren did things to survive and, apart from that, because why the hell not? As long as Warren tracked the right things, he could play with everything else. So far, Warren hadn’t misjudged the survival part.

Layla thought that the part of Warren that schemed against his mother was only there sometimes. Ethan was pretty sure it was always there. It was the threads of absolute control and calculation running through everything Warren did; it was just that part of that calculation was Warren knowing that, if he was going to get what he wanted, he needed things-- people-- who he didn’t and couldn’t completely control.

Which would break anyone who wasn’t looking at it all as a big game where the outcome didn’t actually matter. Which, in turn, meant that everything else in Warren was focused away from the rolling dice and on winning the other games that Warren had going. Those were half grinds and half Warren faking competence at things he’d never had the chance to do before.

The only reason the juggling act worked was that Warren was superbly good at adapting to give the audience what they expected. Warren had been lying to people who might destroy him since before he learned to talk.

That made it kind of amazing that Warren had lied to Ethan and his friends as little as he had.

At least, if Ethan had to make a break for it later, Warren wouldn’t see it coming, not if Ethan was obediently helping Layla. Ethan suspected that Layla would promise not to run. Warren wouldn’t get that Layla’s promises didn’t hold for the rest of them.

Although what Warren understood probably changed from moment to moment, depending on which game he was paying attention to right then. In this case, though, Ethan was pretty sure that Warren would assume broad umbrellas for the promises because them successfully breaking those promises would be convenient for what Warren really wanted. Warren wouldn’t think of lies because he still needed them to betray him in order to help him win.

Which was fucked up in ways that made Ethan’s headache escalate, more than once, to migraine levels.

Once Magenta realized that Ethan was too sick to move, she banged on the door and demanded painkillers. Ethan was in too much pain, at the time, to think through the implications, but none of the others would have dared, and Warren was still giving them chocolates. The cut flowers were all silk now, but they were still coming.

And Magenta ended up with something that helped Ethan’s migraine. Then they all had physicals. Warren escorted Magenta and Layla to theirs, but some nameless minion escorted Ethan and Zach for their turn.

Ethan wasn’t sure if the man he saw was a PA or an NP or an actual facts MD. It didn’t matter. The questions were beyond intrusive, and giving various bodily samples wasn’t optional. Ethan’s body really, really didn’t want to let his blood be stolen. The process took six times as long as it should have, and Ethan had been back in the locker room for two hours before he stopped feeling connected to what was in the damned vials.

They all ended up with vitamin supplements because the food was still crap, especially as far as Layla’s options went. The vitamins, along with medication for Ethan’s migraines and for menstrual cramps and various other likely things, ended up in a freestanding cabinet outside the locker room door.

None of them liked having to ask, but knowing that they could mattered. 

And none of them wanted to admit that it was a sensible precaution. Any one of them might hit that point of despair and decide to find out how terrible it was to die from too much ibuprofen. Ethan wouldn’t, but that was mostly because, even at his most desperate, he wasn’t going to forget that that probably wouldn’t actually kill him, not any more.

 

**6 January 2006**

A few days after Warren had taken Layla to the nursery, he took Ethan there. As they stood in the doorway to the converted classroom, Warren said, “I can hire a dozen teachers and experts, but I don’t have any of those I trust to see the kids as individuals.”

Ethan flinched when Warren started talking, but he recognized it as a job offer. “Pretty sure you wouldn’t like the things I’d teach.” It was a terrible idea. Ethan couldn’t do it in a way that wouldn’t upset Warren. He clenched his hands to hide the tremor.

“You wouldn’t lie to them.” Warren sounded as if that mattered. “You know possible consequences better than the others. They’re going to need to know that the deck’s stacked and how to survive that.” Warren walked further into the room, sat on the floor, and started offering toys to the baby in front of him.

Ethan considered Warren’s words. Warren wasn’t wrong. Ethan did know all of that. He focused on his breathing for almost a minute while watching a dozen babies trying to figure out how to make their bodies do what they wanted them to. Once he was little calmer, he started trying to think things through.

The first thing he realized was that he was the only one in the room who was afraid of Warren. The second thing was that the babies knew Warren. The third was that this trap moved Warren from ‘perceptive and worse than lethal’ to ‘fucking dangerously perceptive and worse than lethal’ on Ethan’s threat assessment scale.

There was no way that Warren didn’t know it was a trap. If Ethan said yes, he wouldn’t be able to walk away, not unless he could take every last child with him. Not because he’d have promised Warren but because he’d have promised the children.

After a few more minutes of watching, Ethan decided that Warren wasn’t going to want to leave any time soon. Ethan took two steps into the room.

Warren looked up and nodded, so Ethan found a place to sit. By the time they finally left, Ethan had been drooled on and spit up on and gnawed on. He felt better than he had for weeks, and only part of it was the realization that Warren genuinely cared about something other than himself. It was as fucked up as everything else about Warren because it was Warren seeing himself in every last child and wanting to change history by protecting them, but it was a hell of a lot more than Ethan had thought possible.

“Could we go outside?” Ethan asked as Warren started back toward the gym. “Just for a few minutes.” Ethan’s voice didn’t shake, and he managed to hold himself as if he weren’t on the verge of bolting. He wasn’t sure why he was bothering; it wouldn’t change anything if he showed fear.

Warren stopped and looked back. He studied Ethan for a moment then shrugged. “Sure.” Once they were ten yards from the building, Warren said, “You’ve got something worth making your body lie again. Good.”

Ethan upgraded his opinion of Warren to ‘really fucking dangerously perceptive.’ He took a deep breath and made himself meet Warren’s eyes. “Are you fucking Magenta? Real definitions not Bill Clinton definitions.”

Warren’s face went very still. “She asked me not to tell you.” Then he shook his head. “Just pretending.”

Ethan almost couldn’t hear the words.

“You’re all more… explicable that way. If I’m… into one or more of you, that is.”

They’d discussed the idea that Warren’s parents thought that the four of them were whims or toys. They just hadn’t ever gone on to discuss what sort of toys an up and coming supervillain might be expected to want.

Ethan didn’t want to know, but he asked anyway. “Did you ask, or did she offer?” He was almost certain that Magenta had offered. It seemed more in character than Warren asking would have been, and Magenta would have seen it as an option pretty damned fast. She was better than the rest of them at thinking like Warren.

Warren shrugged. “She asked if it would help if people thought I was getting some. I’d have been lying if I’d said no.”

Most of the games Warren played ultimately fed into facade, so Ethan was willing to believe it had gone down that way. He was also pretty sure that it being pretend wasn’t about any moral qualms on Warren’s part. He just couldn’t bring himself to ask that.

Warren smiled and answered anyway. “We don’t do it because I’d forget.”

Ethan’s guts clenched for a moment before he completely parsed that.

Warren knew that he’d forget that trusting Magenta with physical intimacy didn’t mean he could trust Magenta more generally. Warren didn’t mean that he’d hurt her. He meant that she’d be able to hurt him.

Ethan managed to breathe again. He also couldn’t ask Warren how many times he’d been betrayed to learn that lesson or how old he’d been the first time it happened.

Warren’s smile didn’t alter. “You understand more than she does, don’t you?” There was a curiosity in his voice that managed to be both gentle and creepy as fuck.

Ethan forced his eyes to stay on Warren’s face. “We understand different things,” he said after a minute. “All four of us understand different things. Magenta… thinks that her getting hurt doesn’t matter as long as the rest of us don’t feel guilty about it. She thinks she deserves all this shit.”

Warren’s smile faltered. His hands clenched.

Every muscle in Ethan’s body went tight. He wanted to run and couldn’t.

“None of you do,” Warren said softly. “No comfort in that, but none of you do. I thought that being good people, being innocent and ignorant, would make you weak, but none of you are weaker than I am.”

That was an admission, an understanding, that Ethan hadn’t expected from Warren. “It doesn’t matter,” Ethan told him. “Even if we were weaker than you are--” He closed his eyes in an effort to stop seeing flames. It helped a little, but he still felt the heat. “That doesn’t make a person less important or less worthy of protection.” He opened his eyes to see that Warren looked surprised.

“Yes, it does.” Warren sounded utterly certain. “But you’re not, and that changes things.”

Warren being a liar was the only unchanging truth Ethan had found since Homecoming, so he held onto that. Warren sounded so sincere, and Ethan wanted so badly to believe, but he also knew that the part Warren was most certain about was the part that was utter and absolute bullshit.

If Warren ever changed his mind about the ‘Yes, it does,’ Warren’s psyche was going to collapse like a wall made of cottage cheese.

Ethan and his friends would die if Warren’s psyche collapsed. It probably wouldn’t be an easy death.

Ethan smiled. “It does,” he agreed. He offered Warren his hand and managed not to flinch or shudder when Warren shook it firmly.


	5. Zach: That Cannot Take the Whole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from W.B. Yeats' “Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgment.”
> 
> Thanks to donutsweeper for beta assistance on this chapter.

Zach knew that Ethan wasn’t ever going to try to escape. Well, Zach hoped. Ethan probably could get away. He just-- Zach knew that Ethan wasn’t willing to live with what his escape would cost the rest of them.

Zach also knew that he ought to feel ashamed for how glad he was every time Ethan stayed another day. He did feel ashamed for the impulse he had every time Warren took him for a walk-- Every time, Zach only just stopped himself from telling Warren what Ethan could do.

Warren knew Ethan could liquify and that he could heal. He didn’t know that Ethan could move in his other form.

The main thing that stopped Zach from telling Warren was knowing that, in order to hold Ethan, Warren would have to force him into something like that water bottle and then keep it closed, trapping Ethan like some sort of weird genie. Zach’s imagination couldn’t make that version of Ethan sound as cheerful as Robin Williams had in Aladdin.

Zach didn’t so much envy his friends their ability to change and strengthen their powers any more. He could see what it cost them each time they decided that, while they _could_ , the price of it would be too high. He was pretty sure that making that decision, over and over, was harder than just being helpless to begin with. Every day, Layla decided that she wasn’t going to murder them all. Every day, Magenta decided not to rip out Warren’s throat. Every day, Ethan decided to stay a little longer in spite of having flashbacks about what Warren had done to him.

Zach’s biggest decisions every day were all things like whether or not he was hungry enough to eat the burned scrambled eggs.

Eggs weren’t that hard. Zach couldn’t imagine how someone who’d been cooking the whole time since Homecoming could still burn the eggs. There were lots of books on how to cook. All you had to do was follow the directions then adjust to compensate for how your tools didn’t quite work right then try again. Zach wasn’t the world’s best cook, but--

**Tuesday 10 January 2006**

“I can cook,” he told Warren one day when they were out. “It’s not a superpower or anything, but it’s not actually hard.” It was pouring rain, so they hadn’t been able to go outside. They’d walked most of the school’s corridors and were now standing in an unused classroom so that Zach could at least look out the window.

For a moment, Warren actually looked hopeful. Then, his expression hardened. “You’d poison us.”

Zach shook his head. “I’d have to actually have poison first.” He wouldn’t bet against Layla being able to come up with something that would do the job, but he would bet against Layla being willing to at this point. He took a deep breath. “We tried. We failed.” He shrugged. “I’m sick of scorched eggs, and someone should make Layla some beans that don’t come from cans and weren’t cooked with bacon.” 

Zach didn’t touch those either. He hadn’t usually worried too much about avoiding pork because his parents didn’t. They didn’t have it in the house as a rule or order it in restaurants, but they also didn’t fuss about whether or not the hot dogs at PTO events and baseball games were pork or turkey or beef or if the marshmallows at campfires contained gelatin. 

At the moment, however, it was one of the few bits of identity Zach could hold onto, something that was Zach-before-Homecoming. He was almost certain that Warren wouldn’t care if Zach kept on considering himself a Jew. Warren had insisted on celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah once he realized that Zach was Jewish, once Zach made the mistake of mentioning that the 25th was the first day of Hanukkah that year, but Hanukkah cost Warren nothing but a little money.

They’d argued, when Warren wasn’t there, about whether the holiday celebrations were Warren trying to bribe them to pull them in closer or Warren twisting the knife over their separation from their families. Zach saw no reason it couldn’t be both.

If Warren was anything like as good with people as Ethan insisted, he couldn’t possibly have missed how much pain eight days of ‘celebration’ had caused Zach. Zach managed not to think about his parents or his sisters most of the time, but Sarah was three, old enough to learn songs, play games, and eat chocolate. Naomi was older but still only half Zach’s age. Their cousins-- Well, Zach was the oldest.

Warren seemed to have thought that Hanukkah was as important to Zach as Christmas was to Ethan and Layla. That was pretty common for people who didn’t know much apart from schools making little kids learn “The Dreidel Song” to balance “Jingle Bells.”

If Warren thought Zach really being Jewish was inconvenient, Zach wasn’t sure what would happen. Zach wasn’t sure he still had it in him to fight Warren for any part of himself. He just hoped that it wasn’t a thing on Warren’s radar right now because Warren didn’t see it as any more more of a threat than Layla’s being vegetarian. Warren respected that as important to her; maybe Warren would respect something important to Zach, too. 

Zach wondered if Warren would find a way to make it happen if Zach wanted a kosher kitchen. According to Magenta and Ethan, if one of the four of them wanted it and if it didn’t involve risk to Warren, Warren would probably go all out. ‘Risk to Warren’ was kind of a nebulous concept, and Zach had only the vaguest notions of what was required to make a kitchen properly clean. It might be something that Warren didn’t see as a big deal-- either in terms of doing it inconveniencing not-Warren people or in terms of not doing it upsetting Zach-- because Warren didn’t think that food was a thing to make a fuss over. Warren preferred that his food taste good, but he was a lot more worried about getting enough calories to fuel his power.

Zach told himself that he wasn't seriously considering it as a thing he really wanted.

But if he did... Zach wasn't sure what standards of cleanliness he’d consider desirable if Warren was willing to give him that. If Zach ever even asked. People argued different standards and about maintaining them. A lot. One of his uncles wouldn't eat food from Zach's mother's kitchen because she didn't cook 'right.' He'd been nasty and self-righteous about it. Zach never wanted to be Uncle Aaron. If nothing else, his parents weren't on visiting terms with Uncle Aaron any longer.

And Warren had given Zach Hanukkah without Zach asking for it. Warren trying to research what Zach being Jewish actually meant was kind of terrifying because he might decide that Zach needed a rabbi or something else that Warren thought was necessary for ‘doing it right’ based on who-the-hell-knew what source-- Which meant Zach trying to explain a lot of things to Warren that Zach wasn't 100% clear on himself. Zach had learned enough to get through his bar mitzvah without embarrassing himself, but he'd been more interested his chances of becoming a superhero.

Keeping Warren focused on food would be simpler, and the easiest way to avoid most of the challenges of keeping kosher would be cooking vegetarian. Not that Zach was would really make Warren and however many thugs there were on the island eat either kosher or vegetarian. Not at this point, anyway. Later, seeing where Warren stopped him would tell the four of them a hell of a lot. Later, after Zach had a chance to do some research.

Now, it was only about convincing Warren that Zach in the kitchen might be safe, so Zach put all of those thoughts aside to focus on Warren. “Not being able to see meat doesn’t make it vegetarian.” He didn’t like the pleading, wheedling sound of his own words.

Zach hadn’t seen Warren look uncertain before, and Zach had to fight not to tremble. If Warren decided to be pissed off, there was damn all Zach could do to protect himself. Eventually, Zach found the strength to shrug and went back to watching the rainwater running down the windows.

A few minutes later, Zach said, “I’m not actually sure what you want me to do.” He really hoped that Warren would understand. “I haven’t got anything. I know why you want the rest of them.” His dignity was gone. His confidence. His sense of his own reality and value. His ability to pretend. All vanished. “I can’t give you them without stopping being me, so I don’t know what you want from me.”

Zach knew that he probably would give the others to Warren if Warren asked for that. He was almost certain that all of the others knew, too. The way they looked at him each time he came back from spending time with Warren said it loud enough that he always shook his head to indicate that Warren hadn’t asked.

That Warren hadn’t asked might mean that it wasn’t something Warren wanted.

“I’ll think about that.” Warren’s smile seemed to be genuine. “I’m pretty sure we can come up with something for you to do. Cooking, maybe, but…” He shrugged then added, softly, “I want all four of you. You every bit as much as the other three.” 

There was an intensity to the final two sentences that Zach found disturbing. There was nothing pragmatic or detached about Warren’s tone. Zach thought he heard covetousness more than desire, but the desire was there, too. For a moment, Zach couldn’t breathe because he thought he saw the shape of his future. 

Warren wasn’t looking for minions. He wasn’t-- well not just-- looking for people who could protect him from his mother. He would use them for all of that, certainly, but that wasn’t the point. Warren had never had anyone he could trust or anyone who loved him.

Zach thought maybe he could do that. He thought, too, that he was the only one of the four of them capable of being first. Maybe it wouldn’t be terrible.

Warren put a hand on Zach’s shoulder and squeezed. “I haven’t ever regretted keeping you.”

Zach could still feel the weight of Warren’s hand later, hours after Warren locked him in again.

 

**Sunday 15 January 2006**

Five days later, when Warren finally allowed Zach into the kitchen, Zach was appalled by the sheer size of the place. He supposed it made sense. Sky High had had hundreds of students, and the kitchen had been designed to feed all of them. He just hadn’t thought about it.

He looked over the counters and the sinks and the stovetops. “Has anyone cleaned this? Ever?” He hadn’t thought about basic dirt being a problem with the kitchen. He could probably manage that sort of cleaning, but that would be time when he wasn’t cooking. He glanced at Warren who shrugged.

“It’s a kitchen,” Warren said.

Zach stared at him for a moment before realizing that Warren didn’t see it. If he ever got out of here, he was never, ever eating at the Paper Lantern again. “The only reason you don’t have ants in everything is that this is Sky High.” That was also, he was sure, why there weren’t mice or rats.

Layla’d said something about the island having a ‘very carefully managed ecosystem.’

Zach was betting that nobody was doing upkeep on that part either. “Things get dirty. Things fall apart.” He’d assumed that their prison had never been cleaned before their escape attempt to increase the unpleasantness. He-- _they_ \-- should have realized that Warren simply hadn’t thought of it. Zach wondered how much general maintenance-- things like sweeping the corridors-- was automated and if Warren had plans for when that needed repair.

He surveyed the kitchen. Looking at it, he wasn’t absolutely sure Warren would _notice_ when the floors got gritty and streaked with mud. “Do you have people who are willing to clean? I mean deep cleaning with scrubbing and rubber gloves and…” Zach shook his head.

“Only for the nursery wing,” Warren replied. Something in his tone said he was maybe starting to see the problem.

“The rock’s likely to stay in the sky a long time,” Zach said, “but that’s because rocks last eons. The building will go before the water purification does or anything else that’s inside the rock, but the roof won’t last more than twenty years.” He might be wrong about that. Maybe they’d made the roof out of some sort of super alloy, and none of it would ever rot, but he didn’t think that was the way to bet.

The sidekick classrooms hadn’t been built rundown simply to make the sidekicks remember they were worthless. They’d just been allowed to decay in order to send the same message. The parts of the school where the heroes had classes were a lot better maintained.

Warren sighed. “That means more people which means more supplies which means more transportation runs which means--” He frowned.

“The school did it somehow,” Zach told him. He wanted to point out that Warren had let Royal Pain eliminate all of the people who had known how that worked, but he didn’t want to risk pissing Warren off. Not when Warren was already cranky and already dubious about letting Zach into the kitchen.

“I’m not going to burn you for it, Zach.” Warren’s words were soft enough that Zach thought the guards watching them probably didn’t hear.

Zach didn’t actually believe him. He wouldn’t have called Warren a liar, but he didn’t believe him.

“It’s a test,” Warren said. There was just a hint of grimness in his voice. “Sky High is a test.”

Zach hadn’t heard that grimness since the first time Warren realized that Ethan had superhealing. He tried to hide his flinch by moving immediately to investigate the lower cupboards. “Wasn’t likely to be anything else.” He didn’t look at Warren. Cleaning supplies and heavy pots were most likely to be below the counters. “You’re heir to bigger and better things.

Warren didn’t say anything, so maybe he hadn’t noticed Zach’s flinch, but Warren had also never said anything about the way Ethan shook when Warren entered the locker room. Warren knew. Everyone knew. Warren hadn’t ever said anything.

“I’ll have to… liberate some money,” Warren said as Zach pulled things out of the cupboards. “Can’t pay new people otherwise.”

Zach thought about asking if he was going to get paid, but he couldn’t imagine what he’d ever have to spend money on.

But it was kind of reassuring that Warren was planning to pay the people who’d be doing the scutwork. It would be really easy to staff the school, as it was now, with slave labor. Zach didn’t know if Warren’s minions had powers beyond being really well armed, but being really well armed was enough to keep most people from escaping the island. Layla’s father had explained the economics of staffing isolated bases that needed to remain completely secret. He’d been a much more pragmatic and angry teacher than Mr Boy had.

Nobody was leaving Sky High without a way to fly. Guarding the buses from normal people was never going to be that hard. Zach wasn’t going to point that out, but he was pretty sure someone else would.

If they were resupplying using the school buses, though, and Magenta had been sure of it, then their location wasn’t actually all that secret. Not unless the buses had chameleon circuits or something. It would be silly not to, though, so maybe they did.

And were they stealing supplies or buying them? Did they spread out the purchases or otherwise disguise them? Diapers and formula for twenty four babies was a pretty damned noticeable thing in any store, and paying by credit card was traceable. Paying with cash made the covert nature of the purchase more obvious because diapers were expensive. Nobody carried that kind of cash. A school bus in the parking lot loading up with a ton of diapers-- At least twelve people would take pictures.

Zach would have bought cloth and some extra laundry equipment. Which made him wonder if Warren’s people had installed extra laundry already or if they were shipping clothes, sheets, towels and all that to the surface for washing. 

Warren knew he needed help with the babies. Apparently, he hadn’t realized that there was more to running a secret base than just making sure that no one got in or out unnoticed and that no one starved.

Zach found enough that he could get dinner started. Lunch was going to be make-your-own sandwiches, peanut butter, grape jelly, sliced cheese, and really terrible bread, the kind you could make sandpaper out of just by letting it get stale. They had cold cuts, but Zach pitched them after a sniff test. If people got sick from those, Warren was going to assume poison.

One of the cupboards had both cookbooks and manuals for some of the more esoteric equipment. That category included what had to be the world’s largest pressure cooker. When he inspected it, he found it merely dusty. That was a lot easier to deal with than dust baked into grease. Plain dust could just be wiped or rinsed. The pressure cooker booklet included notes about making industrial quantities of beans on short notice. He could get around needing to soak dried beans by using the pressure cooker in two cycles.

Zach hadn’t known that beans needed to be soaked.

Judging by the labels, the dried beans had all been purchased before Homecoming. The newer food had labels that gave him the impression that they were over the southeastern US now rather than somewhere in the midwest. He used the oldest beans first, some very large bags of black-eyed peas. He wasn’t sure that dried beans went bad as long as they stayed dry, but he didn’t figure that was a reason not to cycle them. It would suck to find out the hard way that beans actually did eventually go bad.

There were multiple bread machines, and the flour still smelled okay, so Zach thought that would be something easy enough to do. Assuming the yeast wasn’t dead. He mixed some sugar and warm water in a mug and added a pinch of yeast. When he came back a few minutes later, there was a layer of bubbled scum on top of the water.

“How many people do I need to feed?” he asked Warren who was about ten feet away and leaning against a sink. Zach was more than a little surprised that Warren was still there.

“Sixty five,” Warren said.

Zach took a deep breath. He’d been close in his estimate. “I’ve never cooked for more than five at a time, but at least I won’t burn the damned eggs.”

“You need help with this, don’t you?”

“More hands, yes.” Zach wanted his friends, but he was pretty sure he was getting goons instead. “But only if they can read and will actually do what I tell them to do.”

Warren flicked his fingers toward the watching guards. “If I tell them to obey you, they’ll do it.” Sparks flew from his hand.

Zach set his jaw against the stabbing fear produced by Warren’s display of power. He knew what Warren could do, and he knew the level of control that Warren had. If Warren burned Zach again, it would be deliberate.

Warren looked at Zach with a neutral expression that left Zach certain that Warren knew. “Only if I have to, Zach.”

Zach looked at the floor and nodded. “I’m going to need something to write with and on. We don’t have-- I need cleaning supplies, and in terms of making things actually taste good, about all I can do now is add salt.”

“I need lists about more than the kitchen.”

Zach looked up.

Warren’s frown was thoughtful more than threatening. “I don’t know the things that aren’t obvious.”

“I can’t do that and cook.” Zach was already worried about how much time cooking for sixty five was going to take. It was going to be more than a full time job even with help.

“Bad food hasn’t killed us yet.” Warren didn’t look like he was even seeing the kitchen any more. “And we know it’s a problem. I need to know what I haven’t noticed yet.”

Zach hesitated. Then, the words almost forced themselves out. “You need more than me for that.”

Warren smiled.

Zach smiled back. He was pretty sure the expression wobbled a bit, but he managed a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Note:** In 2005, advice about introducing foods to the diets of small children with any risk of allergies was quite different from what it is now. Chocolate was considered a major potential allergen and was therefore delayed considerably. I don’t remember the exact schedule (my daughter was born in 2003 and did have food allergies), but three years old was considered the age to try the last few major allergens. Now (2018), the recommendation from pediatricians is to introduce likely allergens as early as possible.


End file.
